Richmond's Next Mayor: Drone, Drone, Drone

It's hard to tell if I wrote "Make it stop" over and over again because that's what was running through my head during tonight's mayoral candidate "listening forum" or because one of the candidates leapt atop a table and screamed it at the top of his lungs.

God bless the Coalition for a Greater Richmond, the Crusade for Voters and moderator Lisa Lafata for trying to bring something a little different to this election cycle, but if you're going to engage the community in an issue-oriented brainstorming party you might want to button down a process that actually engages the audience. Or give people door prizes. (Speaking of things that rhyme with "door," where were the promised hors d'oeuvres?)

Bitching aside, the listening forum did create quite the laundry list of issues of interest to the 150 or so audience members -- education, transportation, regional cooperation, public housing, affordable housing, code enforcement, assessments, council/mayor relations, economic development, the Downtown Plan, environmentalism, energy efficiency, public spaces/parks, minority economic development, small business development and animal control.

If people could agree on what the mayor is supposed to do, the next one might actually tackle sixteen or seventeen of those issues.

"Doug and I are friends," one man said, as the microphone was passed his way. "We grew up in the same area. City Council has a legislative responsibility for the city. The mayor has to be responsive to that."

"Folks need to understand, we the people are in charge," said another audience member.

"Actually, Virginia is under the Dillon Rule, so the General Assembly is in charge," opined another. That drew a smattering of laughter from those in-the-know.

Once the issues were captured on some flip chart paper, moderator Lisa Lafata tried to engage the audience in a lively exchange. It wasn't long before the audience asked if they could hear from the candidates, who each had several minutes to introduce themselves at the start of the evening. Lafata demured and ran down the clock. An hour into the evening -- around 7:30 -- she invited the five candidates to take five minutes to respond to the litany of issues.

Dwight Jones talked about schools, the role of the mayor and light rail in Norfolk before he ran out of time. Robert Grey and Bill Pantele made effective use of platitudes and cliches; Grey recovered by delivering his closing thoughts with a righteous intensity. It was hard to hear Paul Goldman clearly -- his microphone was muffled and he spoke with his typical rapid-fire clip. And a demure Lawrence Williams spoke of making Richmond the most livable city in America. (In stark contrast to other cities, where people just die.)

Hopefully, the many reporters gathered -- two from the Times-Dispatch, two from Style Weekly, one from Richmond Magazine and a few others who were either scribbling notes for their weblogs, some media outlet or their hope chest -- did a better job of capturing the candidates thoughts. Here are the few takeaways I did scribble down:

• "Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop." [unattributed]
• "On education, I think that no city can be a great city without a world-class education system ... I think the generation that follows deserves more than what I got." [Dwight Jones]
• "There has been a lot of hype about Richmond having a strong mayor form of government ... if you remember, we didn't vote for a strong mayor." [Dwight Jones]
• "The mayor of this city has got to find common ground not just with the City Council and the School Board but with the citizens." [Robert Grey]
• "It doesn't matter if you have a strong mayor, a weak mayor or a medium mayor, you deserve a great mayor." [Bill Pantele]
• "We've got to protect the riverfront. If we don't do that, we've lost so much. [Paul Goldman]
• "I want Richmond to be a destination city for the history of the Southern woman." [Paul Goldman]
• "Let's stop talking about the schools. It's the neighborhoods around the schools where the issues are." [Lawrence Williams]

For this, I miss "Smallville"?